A Methodology for an Auto-Generated and Auto-Maintained HL7 FHIR OWL Ontology for Health Data Management

The process of maintenance of an underlying semantic model that supports data management and addresses the interoperability challenges in the domain of telemedicine and integrated care is not a trivial task when performed manually. We present a methodology that leverages the provided serializations of the Health Level Seven International (HL7) Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) specification to generate a fully functional OWL ontology along with the semantic provisions for maintaining functionality upon future changes of the standard. The developed software makes a complete conversion of the HL7 FHIR Resources along with their properties and their semantics and restrictions. It covers all FHIR data types (primitive and complex) along with all defined resource types. It can operate to build an ontology from scratch or to update an existing ontology, providing the semantics that are needed, to preserve information described using previous versions of the standard. All the results based on the latest version of HL7 FHIR as a Web Ontology Language (OWL-DL) ontology are publicly available for reuse and extension.

Towards Unified Data Exchange Formats for Reporting Molecular Drug Susceptibility Testing

Background: With the rapid development of new advanced molecular detection methods, identification of new genetic mutations conferring pathogen resistance to an ever-growing variety of antimicrobial substances will generate massive genomic datasets for public health and clinical laboratories. Keeping up with specialized standard coding for these immense datasets will be extremely challenging. This challenge prompted our effort to create a common molecular resistance Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) panel that can be used to report any identified antimicrobial resistance pattern. Objective: To develop and utilize a common molecular resistance LOINC panel for molecular drug susceptibility testing (DST) data exchange in the U.S. National Tuberculosis Surveillance System using California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and New York State Department of Health as pilot sites. Methods: We developed an interface and mapped incoming molecular DST data to the common molecular resistance LOINC panel using Health Level Seven (HL7) v2.5.1 Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) message specifications through the Orion Health™ Rhapsody Integration Engine v6.3.1. Results: Both pilot sites were able to process and upload/import the standardized HL7 v2.5.1 ELR messages into their respective systems; albeit CDPH identified areas for system improvements and has focused efforts to streamline the message importation process. Discussion: The common molecular resistance LOINC panel is designed to be generalizable across other resistance genes and ideally also applicable to other disease domains. Conclusion: The study demonstrates that it is possible to exchange molecular DST data across the continuum of disparate healthcare information systems in integrated public health environments using the common molecular resistance LOINC panel. Keywords: Data Exchange Formats, Electronic Laboratory Reporting, Health Information Exchange, LOINC, Health Level Seven, Public Health Surveillance.

The Intelligent Healthcare Data Management System Using Nanosensors

We developed a design of Intelligent Healthcare Data Management System using nanosensors (IHDMS) and composed an application for mobile device. The proposed IHDMS will coordinate the healthcare data of the patients from nanosensors and transforms it into a worldwide consumed standard HL7 (Health Level Seven) for conversion of healthcare data. This converted data dispatches to a server of its system. The battery lifetime of the facility is feasible to increase, the memory usage is less than 100 KB, and it operates all data by employing few and far between resources. Moreover, the proposed system decreases the waiting time in the transposing data, and secured channel was used for the server of the healthcare center in the running HL7 format data.